Monthly Archives: February 2018

Free Love and Silverware — the Oneida Community

Many of us remember the 1960s and 70s, with the explosive proliferation of communes and intentional communities, many set in or around California. Most were short-lived, and some were flat-out toxic. But they were counter-culture, and to many observers they were downright un-American.

*In reality, though, they were as American as apple pie. We often miss the fact that the English colonies in America started out as experimental utopian societies: the Pilgrims with their communism and commitment to the simple life; Massachusetts and the other Puritan colonies, with their austerity and a commitment to self-examination and self-criticism that would make Chairman Mao cheer; Rhode Island, with its commitment to anarchy; the Pennsylvania Quakers, with their pacifism and their mysticism; the pacifist anabaptist sects, with their semi-closed communities; Georgia, where the rulers imported misfits and criminals so as to reprogram them after isolating them in the wilderness.

*Our pioneer settlers were the lunatic fringe, and when they sailed away, folks back in Europe were delighted to wave goodbye.

*We got another burst of utopian communities in the middle of the 19th century, as the world was turning toward the modern age, away from lifestyles that had endured for a thousand years. Celibate Shaker communes spread from Maine to Kentucky. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in a utopian community, and so did Louisa May Alcott. So did John Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. John Brown tried to start a bi-racial community near Lake Placid.

*While dozens of such communities speckled the American landscape, they lay especially thick in a band then ran from Boston to Buffalo. One of the most successful, and longest enduring, was the Oneida Community.

*The hundreds of members practiced hard work, economic communalism, religious perfectionism, gender equality, and complex marriage… all the members were considered married to all the other members. Needless to say, they were highly controversial.

*John Humphrey Noyes founded the Community (at Oneida, NY) in 1848 – a year that saw revolutions all over Europe and in South America, publication of the “Communist Manifesto,” the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, a cholera epidemic that killed 5000 New Yorkers… a tumultuous moment.

*For the next several decades local diaries and letters are sprinkled with scandalized reports that so-and-so, or such-and-such a family, had decamped (often secretly) and joined “the Oneidas.”

*Members subjected themselves to community criticism and evaluation, as well as self-criticism. Sex was not a free-for-all… it had to be consensual, and birth control was practiced. Pregnancy had to be planned and approved, though of course “accidents” happened. Child-rearing was communal. It’s probably too much to say that women were completely equal, but they were a whale of a lot closer to it than women in the outside world. Short hair and trouser suits were the norm.

*Older members of the Community introduced younger members to sex, which near the end of the Community’s history led to threats of statutory rape charges, though in fact they probably wouldn’t have applied under New York law at the time.

*Future presidential assassin Charles Guiteau lived in the community for about five years, but members (not unreasonably) considered him insane and held him at arm’s length. He left the community, and sued Noyes, some six years before killing Garfield.

*An elderly Noyes left the country in 1878, urging the end of complex marriage. Members agreed the following year and in1881 voted to close the Community, creating in its place a joint-stock corporation that endures to this day, making the famed Oneida silverware.

*The Oneida Community Mansion House is now a museum and historic site. This Friday (Mar. 2, at 4 PM) Dr. Molly Jessup, the museum’s curator of education, will tell us the Community’s story at a Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture in Bath Fire Hall – free and open to all. Hope to see you there!

A Tour Through the Counties: Sprawling Steuben

STEUBEN was formed in 1796, and named for hero of the Revolution Baron Steuben. He never visited, but the name continually confuses researchers who mix it up with the Town of Steuben, near the Baron’s home in Herkimer County… not to mention those who mix it up with Steuben County, Indiana (where several place names are duplicated, just to muddy the waters even more).
*Steuben County is bigger than Rhode Island… in fact, it’s almost the size of Delaware. Its terrain varies considerably. Roughly south of the line of the Conhocton and Chemung Rivers, the highlands of the Appalachian Plateau rise. In the northwest corner, western New York’s rich muckland begins.
*The county’s so big that folks from its various components scarcely know the rest of the place. Corning, of course, is dominated by Corning Incorporated. Formerly an industrial town where the Glass Works pumped out soot, and trains ran down the main streets, Corning is now world headquarters for the company, and the center of research. Market Street, once crammed with saloons, is a lovely tourist marketplace. The Glass Museum is a major tourist attractor, and Corning Community College perches up on the peak of Spencer Hill.
*Hornell once boomed with railroad work – nowadays it hums, but the “Maple City” still earns much of its bread from the trains. Hornell has one of two Carnegie libraries in the five-county region. For decades Hornell was home to farm teams for Major League Baseball… alumni include Don Zimmer and Charlie Neal.
*Bath bustles as the county seat, and home for a V.A. Medical Center, which began life as a place to care for New York veterans of the Civil War. Arbor Development, the ARC, Pro-Action, Catholic Charities and other service agencies complement the work of the County and the V.A. Bath also has the county prison, and what used to be called “the infirmary.”
*Hammondsport, like Corning, is a tourism magnet (though many of the tourists bed down in Bath). The attractors here are Keuka Lake, the wineries, and Glenn Curtiss. Swimming and boating are big on the lake, and the scenery’s spectacular. Vine-covered hillsides and 19th-century stone vaults complement modern winery operations, and many of them welcome visitors.
*The Finger Lakes Trail wends through Steuben – so do the Bristol Hills Trail, and the Crystal Hills Trail. It’s New York’s top county for deer harvest, and in the top five for turkey.
*There are hospitals in or near Bath, Corning, and Hornell, and state parks in opposite corners. Robert Moses selected the “gorge-eous” site for Stony Brook State Park, and Governor Al Smith bought it.
*Addison, Prattsburgh, Hammondsport, and Bath have lovely green town squares (some have more than one). Savona, Bath, Hornell, and Corning have breathtaking historic churches. Parts of the central and southern portions of the county are horse-and-buggy country, with substantial populations of Amish and/or Old Order Mennonites.
*A staggering view overlooks Bath from Mossy Bank Park. On the flats below the lookout, eagles frequently nest… the corridors of the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers have been growth regions for them, and also for osprey. Bobcat, beaver, fisher, and bear have recently returned to their historic ranges here.
*Besides the wildlife, Steuben has a little over a hundred thousand people. As far as I can tell, most of them like it here.

Dollhouses and Miniatures — at the National Soaring Museum

Have you been to the National Soaring Museum lately?

*If you haven’t been lately (or at all), think about a trip up Harris Hill to take a look. I think you’ll get some pleasant surprises.

*The annual dollhouse and miniatures show that used to sparkle up the winter at Curtiss Museum has migrated over to the Soaring Museum, and we stopped in to see it on a February Saturday.

*We’ve been regulars at the show, and even sometime exhibitors, since the 1995-96 season, so we encountered some old friends, as well as making some new acquaintances.

*Right in the lobby we found pieces from the late Marie Rockwell’s collection, such as a southwestern “adobe” house complete with cermaics and needlepoint carpets in Navajo-style designs… an exacting and delightful attention to detail.

*Most of us are accustomed to dollhouses for play, but miniaturists work for showing, rather than playing (though making and showing are forms of play themselves). Scott Hopkins’s camper is open on one side and the top for better viewing. It even includes an outhouse behind the camper.

*Sue McGoun created an amusing upstairs/downstairs house, where the downstairs hosts a pair of stereotypical 1950s parents in 1950s setting, while the upstairs is populated with, and furnished by, today’s 21st-century teenagers.

*Each item shines on its own merits. Stacy Clark’s instricate rosewood “chinoiserie” furniture (exhibited on its own) is inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Pam Burton’s Halloween House was created in a lengthy labor of love. Ron and Shirlee Cornwell created a large farmhouse, but it springs to the fore because of the outdoor Christmas display.

*Long-time area residents might recognize Fritz Meyers’s piece – a large-scale model of the Atlantic gas station in Big Flats, complete with double service bay and two pumps out front.

*Will Parker creates unusual eye-catching model train layouts, including an X-scale figure-8 with windmill and stone cottages – the more you study it, the more you find, and the more you lose yourself in Will’s little world.

*And that’s just (some of) what’s in the lobby! Downstairs there’s a large mansion by Joyce Merletti, and a “community” of three mansions and three cottages, from Marie Rockwell, Lillian Elwood, and Helen Keeton. Undergoing some work in the restoration shop, but accessible for viewing, is a fully-furnished four-story mansion with excellent sightlines through its chock-full interior.

*As if that weren’t enough, there’s a small but impressive collection of Eastern Orthodox icons “written” (that is, painted) by Joyce Merletti. And in the upstairs mezannine hallway are a half-dozen nature paintings by C. F. Lawrence. In “All But Forgotten,” a blue jay perches on a dilapidated “park bench,” surrounded by overgrown grasses and under an overcast sky.

*The female cardinal in “Fallen Silent” perches on an old bell, and even without touching it you can feel the rust on the bell.

*So why is all of this at the Soaring Museum? Is not completely new… NSM has a history (and a future) with quilt exhibits, for instance. The board and new director Trafford Doherty (like me, a former director at Curtiss) are looking forward to more changing exhibits with more variety, connecting the place more directly with the local community, on top of being what I believe is the only soaring museum in the western hemisphere. And more about THAT in a future blog!

A Trip Through (a Few MORE) of the Hamlets

A few weeks ago we took a look at some of our smaller communities… still known, named, and mapped, but unincorporated, and without official boundaries. There are 72 of these on the official Steuben County map, and plenty more in other counties.

*Rheims (or Reims) in Urbana was a stop on the old Bath & Hammondsport Railroad. Today it’s home to Finger Lakes Boating Museum, Mercury Aircraft, Pleasant Valley Wine Company, and Great Western Visitors Center. A thousand spectators came out to Rheims on July 4, 1908, to watch Glenn Curtiss fly his “June Bug.”

*Not too far away is Pleasant Valley, also once a B&H stop. Drivers whizzing by on State Route 54 recognize the expansive Pleasant Valley Cemetery, where Curtiss and other aviation notables lie buried. PV also has a number of homes, the elegant old Grange building, Vinehust Motel, Urbana Town offices, and the Finger Lakes Trail, which wends its way through a lovely vineyard here. The “June Bug II” flights of 1976 took place from the airstrip here.

*South Hornell forms a southern fringe of “urban sprawl” from Hornell. (NORTH Hornell is an incorporated village.) Gibson (Town of Corning) faces the City of Corning across the Chemung River, while East Corning is a little downstream, at I-86 Exit 48 and almost on the county line. Gibson was the site of Steuben County’s worst train wreck – 44 dead – back in 1912.

*Burns is a small agricultural community in Town of Dansville, straddling the Steuben/Allegany County line. Also in Dansville is South Dansville, once Rogersville, site of Town Offices, a cemetery, an active Methodist church, and quite a few homes.

*Towlesville, in the Town of Howard, is no longer the dense population center it once was, but folks for quite a stretch around consider themselves to be Towlesville residents. At the old crossroads is an active Grange, and a monument to the Towlesville Cornet Band.

*The settlement of Howard has its own exit (#35) on Interstate Route 86. It’s a good-sized community, with quite a few homes, the library, a church, a cemetery, historic museum, several businesses, Town Offices, and the Howard Community Center. For decades Howard had a large impressive high school and graded school, which was succeeded by a new elementary school in the 1930s. That building is now a business, rather than a school.

*Mitchellsville, in the Town of Wheeler, has a fair-sized population, several businesses, a cemetery, and an active Methodist church.

*Many folks don’t know the name of Ingleside, and those who do are often flabbergasted to learn that it’s in Steuben County – those heading to Naples from Bath or Avoca way go through Ingleside on State Road 53. Long a lumbering center, Ingleside is much like Mitchellsville, with numerous homes, several businesses, and an active church.

*Coopers Plains, which also enjoys its own I-86 exit (#43) is a good-sized community with two churches, a huge cemetery, several businesses, and, until recently, a Grange. The State Police station, BOCES, and the Southern Tier Library System are all a stone’s throw away, on the other side of the Interstate.

*Back in the 1920s Coopers had a very large Scout troop. Railroads stopped here, but the place suffered whenever Meads Creek or the Conhocton River flooded. There was a two-story school here, and in the 1950s a modern elementary school was built, but they have different uses now,

*Future IBM giant Tom Watson grew up nearby, went to church here, and supported local activities all his life… often with large financial donations! He always remembered his childhood friends, and took a crowd of them by train to New York City in 1939, so they could all enjoy the World’s Fair together.